My car is at the garage so often for repairs, the mechanics invite me to their Christmas parties. This year I was also invited to the World Speedway Championship, which they go to every year. I’ve never been to speedway before, I protested, but that didn’t matter, they said. It was easy to follow and in any case the speedway was really just an excuse for a massive booze-up in Cardiff. Everything was booked, they said: hotel, trains, speedway tickets. All I had to do, they said, was get my arse to the station for 8.15 a.m. on Friday with beer for the journey. There were 16 of us going, they said, drinking lager, mostly.
I missed the train and for one reason and another I didn’t get to Cardiff until the evening, with the name of the hotel written on the back of my hand in Biro. The town centre was full of drunk lads and coveys of raucous babes with hardly anything on, and every doorway was guarded by at least two bouncers wearing ear pieces, and the genial Heddlu were much in evidence. Outside a pub a group of topless chaps were hoarsely and unkindly singing the one-line song, ‘When Thatcher dies, we’re having a party’.
The hotel, when I found it, was above a disco bar. The music beat issuing from this bar was the loudest and deepest and most reverberative in the town centre by far, and there was a long queue marshalled by four bouncers. Note to self, I thought: no point even trying to get any sleep until three of four, or whenever this place closes.
The hotel interior, however, was surprisingly quiet. I went up in a lift as far as the reception area and found myself in a different world: a world of carpets and flowers and politeness. I was sharing a room with a chap called Brian. I hadn’t met Brian before and he wasn’t in the room when I went up to shower and unpack. No doubt Brian and the rest of the gang were all out on the lash somewhere. I could tell by the way he had stowed his gear that Brian was a tidy and unpresuming individual.
I went down again to the deserted lounge bar. Behind this bar were two neat, attractive and efficiently busy young women. I leaned on the counter, wondering what to have. While I pondered, we passed the time of day. One of them asked me to guess where she came from. I guessed Cardiff. Guess again, she said. I guessed Swansea. She was from Poland. Before that moment I wouldn’t have believed it possible for a Polish person to speak English with a Welsh accent as perfectly as that. I proffered genuine congratulations. She suggested I drank vodka, the national drink of her homeland.
The other woman asked me to guess where she came from. I guessed she came from Poland also. Wrong again. She was Czech. In her country they drink a spirit flavoured with Juniper berries, she said, so how about I have a gin to start?
In truth I didn’t really fancy a drink at all. After much deliberation, I finally lamely asked the Polish woman for an orange J2O, which is a soft drink. She misheard me, though, in spite of her perfect command of the language, and poured me out a double Jack Daniels and Coke. When I complained, she persuaded me to drink it by saying that she thought it was a very nice drink and one that she liked to have herself every now and again. So I drank it down, didn’t dislike it, and quickly ordered another, which she poured out with every sign of happiness that we had it in common that we both liked the same drink.
After my fourth or fifth one, these two articulate and friendly women said it was time they went home to bed, and no, no, they couldn’t possibly stay for a drink, nor did they much fancy coming out on the town with me.
Their place was taken by a shifty-looking middle-aged man with his grey hair tied up in a ponytail. His was the unenviable job of serving the hotel guests with drinks until the last one went to bed. But he didn’t mind, he said. Working kept him occupied. It kept his mind off things. Such as, I said? Going back to London and killing his ex-wife, he said. He went on to tell me how much of a trial it was not to go back to London and kill his ex-wife, how much mental capital it burned up.
And then, at last, I got a call from my speedway pals, telling me which bar they were in, and to get my arse over there asap. So I wished the night barman a cheery good night, and headed out for the bright lights of Cardiff.
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